Russia to bring first unmanned combat aircraft into service by 2020

The Russian Air Force is to receive its first unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) into service by 2020, with testing provisionally scheduled for 2017. Successful U.S. operations using drone aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan spurred Russia to revive its development program.

The Russian Air Force is to receive its first unmanned
combat air vehicles (UCAVs) into service by 2020. It is expected that state
trials or field tests of the new UCAVs may start in 2017. According to Deputy
Defense Minister Yury Borisov, research and development work for this project
is now nearly complete.

Drone fighters are able to tackle strategic tasks because
they are difficult to detect and have better combat sustainability than manned
aircraft.

There are over 600 types of unmanned aerial vehicles
produced in the world today, including 25 in Russia. A mere 20 years ago,
Moscow was an undisputed leader in this field: In the 1980s, it manufactured
950 Tu-143 reconnaissance UAVs alone.

However, the Defense Ministry then wound
up drone production, since it no longer had either the money or ideological
reasons to commission this type of aircraft.

It was the Americans who prompted the Russian military to
revive the program. Successful U.S. operations with the use of UAVs in
Afghanistan and Pakistan have shown that no war of the future can be conducted without
drones.

All the more so since training an ordinary military pilot takes many years
and millions of dollars, while creating a drone takes far less time and money.
Furthermore, drones reduce loss of life. Personnel operating them are based
well behind their troop positions and will never get hurt in fighting.

Another impulse behind Russia’s drive to develop its own
UCAVs was the 2008 war in South Ossetia. When the Russian Defense Ministry saw
that the Georgian side was using Israeli drones, it concluded that this type of
aircraft was essential for the new century.

Vertical lift-off

That very same year, the first tender for developing UCAVs
was announced. It was awarded to several design bureaus. The Yakovlev design
bureau presented drafts of an unmanned combat air vehicle called Skad. In its
appearance and technical characteristics, it was very similar to the American
Х-47 model.

Its main characteristics were announced to be the
following: maximum take-off weight, 10 tons; range, 4,000 km; a flight speed of
at least 800 km per hour. It will be capable of carrying two
air-to-surface/anti-radiation missiles or two smart bombs with a total weight
of no more than one ton. There have been no further reports about work on that
UCAV.

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The second winner was the Sukhoi design bureau with a
project called the Х-40. There is very little information about it available.
Its design is likely to "inherit" characteristics from the famous Su
fighters and to become a prototype for a sixth-generation fighter.

This is what
Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov has indicated, hinting that the future
strike aircraft will be created on the basis of technologies used in the
fifth-generation fighter Т-50.

The Т-50 meets the main requirement for modern fighters:
high intellectualization, with a large number of devices all along the fuselage
and wings, capable of independently analyzing flight information and adjusting
the aircraft's mission input data. The aircraft has low-level terrain following
capability and can, without human intervention, locate and classify air, ground
and sea targets.

Price of the matter

The UAV market is enjoying a real boom at the moment, with
leading air powers ready to invest nearly $55 billion in it (including $16
billion for purchasing the aircraft).

In mid-February 2014, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu
announced that the ministry intended to spend 320 billion rubles (about $8.8
billion) by 2020 on a program of supplying the Russian armed forces with
unmanned aerial vehicles.

It is not clear which specific UAVs this money will be used
to purchase. All recent exhibitions of unmanned combat air vehicles for the
Defense Ministry have consisted of two parts. The first is an open one,
presenting tactical and semistrategic aircraft, which are frequently manufactured
under license or use an imported component base. These are usually dual-purpose
UAVs.

The second is a closed one, where ministry officials have
been able to see strategic aircraft. At one of such exhibitions, according to a
source close to the Defense Ministry, Shoigu was shown a solar-powered
strategic aircraft. The drone was so big that it could not be brought to the
exhibition and was shown to the defense minister via a video link.

Experts point out that the fact that some exhibitions are
held behind closed doors indicates that Russia has prototypes that it is best
not to publicize. All the more so, since a drone's main strength lies not in
its aerodynamic characteristics but in the intellectual content of the software
used to operate it.